I would resist him, that was my most basic impulse. Because what I felt was unfamiliar and uncontrolled. The rational part of me, the part that always had its way, had taken a sideways knock and I was no longer sure of anything. I could find what it was that was stirring me; chase it down and master it. His mouth on mine; I kept summoning it, re-feeling it over and again. The mere fact I had never experienced this thing, that I did not know where it led, those were not reasons to shy away. I could control my addled father, the Cooper brats, any number of insensate animals. I could control myself, and I had done so for far too long.

To hell with resistance. I was an adult, of strong mind and will. I could take hold of this man. I could strip him down and devour him.

HUMMOCK AND THE BOTTLE-ACHE

HUMMOCK AND THE BOTTLE-ACHE

Two mornings later we were among the islands.

My father had decided not to bother with the Great Island: it was steep and mountainous, according to the master, with very little fresh water. The sealers had surveyed its coast over many years and found that it lacked haul-outs and therefore any worthwhile sealing. No one had bothered to base themselves there, let alone make a settlement of the place.

We lay wide of its north-western corner, where the light made great monuments of its granite towers. Off a headland a series of four small islands lay in a line from north to south, the first proud and conical but each subsequent one crouching lower in the sea than the one before it, so that they appeared like the vertebrae of some creature submerging or emerging.

Srinivas believed we would find our quarry in the outer islands, particularly among the southernmost ones in the Franklin Sound, that lay between the Great Island and its lesser neighbour, Cape Barren. There was no gateway westward to the Great Island’s coast that was not attended by them.

The master had elected to begin with Hummock Island, which the sealers had called Prime Seal until they slaughtered the last of the animals there. It was a long, narrow isle lying almost north to south, three rounded hills furred with pale brown grass. As we approached its northern end, a mile or so off, the master called for soundings. It was deep water—its colour showed that as clearly as the readings that the Connolly boys shouted—but Argyle kept calling for more readings while he frowned over the chart. He ordered a reduction of sail, then a sea anchor, and at length we were barely moving at all. The doctor and my father had both come onto the deck. The cloud was light above us and the sea quiet.